(Page 10 of 18) - A Case Study of Historiography of Event: �1840�-A Significant Year for the Incorporation of China authored by Shih, Miin-wen.

relations, most of them had been non-agrarian-based tributaries.

•

The historical demise and structural disintegration of the Sino-centric

tributary  world-system  had  been the  result  of  the clash  between  this world-
system   and   the   Euro-centric   capitalist   world-system.   British   mercantile
interests   began   what   would   become   the   incorporation   of   China   when   the
Qing’s   hegemonic   power   had   started   its   cyclic   decline   and   the   tributary
world-system   could   not   contain   the   European   challenges   by   its   historically
functioning adjustment mechanism.

Qing Dynasty: A Phase (Upswing) and B Phase (Downswing)

In the late downswing of the Ming historical cycle that lasted from 1386 to 1644 the
peasant refugees took over Beijing. In this turmoil, the peripheral Manchus, who resided
beyond the Great Wall, invaded the center and defeated the rebellious peasant armies.
Manchu Emperors declared that they were the guardians of the orthodox Confucian
doctrines. Through the state examination, the new bureaucracy was built, and the
institutional integration of the political structure and ideology was strengthened. Anti-
Manchu nationalism was repressed by the intensification of the institutional integration
of politics and the world ideology of the Sino-centric world-system.

On the other hand, due to the peasant uprisings, the war with the Manchus, and the
Manchu massacre of the anti-Manchu nationalists, the Chinese population decreased
significantly, and the total area of arable land all over China decreased from over 7
million qing

to over 5 million qing (Kuang, 1989: 3). To increase the revenue from the

land poll tax, the Manchu authority encouraged peasants to cultivate the waste land and
conferred ownership of the cultivated land to them.

However, from the mid-18

century onward, the alienating factors in the conjoncture had

appeared in the Qing historical cycle. The percentage of tenants had increased. In the
populated areas like southern Jiangxu Province in eastern China, the percentage of tenant
households among the total of peasant households was about 80%, but in less populated
areas like Ganxu Province in northwestern China, the percentage was about 20-30%.
Thus, the ratio of the number of the landlords to the total population in the villages was
no more than one to ten. However, a small number of landlords owned 34.5% of the
arable land in some parts of the Zhili Province (today’s Hebei Province) in northern
China and 50% of the arable land in some parts of the Hunan Province in central China
(Wu & Xu, 1985 II: 23). Yang Sipa, the governor of Hunan Province, concerned over the
fate of the peasants and the nation and submitted a memorial to the Emperor Qianlong in
1748, which read: “... The rich owned five or six tenths of the arable land; most of the
peasants who used to have their own land became tenants. ..."

One significant sign of the tendency toward land annexation was the rising price of
arable land. The price of arable land per mu was from about one or two taels of silver at
the end of the Ming historical cycle, two or three taels of silver in the 1650s, four or five
taels of silver from the 1670s until 1710s, seven or eight taels of silver in the 1740s, and
up to over fifty taels of silver in the 1790s

iii

(Jiang, 1985: 35).

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